Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone

Engages with the perspectives of people with autism, in their own voices
Autism has been defined by experts as a developmental disorder affecting social and communication skills as well as verbal and nonverbal communication. It is said to occur in as many as 2 to 6 in 1,000 individuals. This book challenges the prevailing, tragic narrative of impairment that so often characterizes discussions about autism.
Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone seriously engages the perspectives of people with autism, including those who have been considered as the most severely disabled within the autism spectrum. The heart of the book consists of chapters by people with autism themselves, either in an interview format with the author or written by themselves. Each author communicates either by typing or by a combination of speech and typing. These chapters are framed by a substantive introduction and conclusion that contextualize the book, the methodology, and the analysis, and situate it within a critical disability studies framework. The volume allows a look into the rich and insightful perspectives of people who have heretofore been thought of as uninterested in the world.

Douglas Biklen is Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education, Teaching, and Leadership; and coordinates the Inclusive Education Program at Syracuse University. He is a senior faculty member in the Center on Disability Studies, Law and Human Policy. He is the author of Access to Academics and Contested Words, Contested Science. He was Educational Advisor for the Academy-Award-winning HBO documentary Educating Peter and is coproducer of the CNN documentary Autism is a World. Jamie Burke lives in Syracuse, New York, where he attends high school. He was the subject of a research report published in 2001 and has written and narrated a video documentary, Inside the Edge, about how, as a teenager, he emerged from typing to speaking. Alberto Frugone lives with his mother and stepfather in Zoagli, Italy, on the coast of the Mediterranean. After attending inclusive secondary school, he recently passed Italy's postsecondary qualifying exams and became the first nonspeaking Italian classified as autistic to attend a university. Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay was born in India and learned to speak and write after much intense support from his mother, from a speech therapist, and from others. By the age of eleven, he had written a book, Beyond the Silence, and was the subject of a BBC documentary. Sue Rubin grew up in southern California and is now a college student. Until the age of thirteen, she was diagnosed as both autistic and severely retarded and was thought incapable of academic work. She is featured in and was the writer for an autobiographical documentary titled Autism Is a World on CNN Presents.